London Girl Geeks Unite: Atlassian Hosts its First Girl Geek Dinner in Europe!

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Atlassian has been making a whistle-stop tour of North America, Europe and Australia these past few weeks. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to get out from behind our desks and meet the people that make Atlassian thrive.

Atlassian’s own Director of Corporate Communications Catherine Norman and Judith Lewis of London Girl Geek Dinners hosted the evening. Astrid Byro, remote worker extraordinaire, was the guest of honor and main speaker. Managing IT projects and teams from the mountains of the Himalayas using Jira on a Kindle Fire, Astrid was the perfect speaker for our controversial subject of teleworking.

Flexibility is the new black

Attendees took a great interest in Astrid’s tales of working from horse trails and cliff edges, and bombarded her with questions about connectivity, software, batteries, data files and management skills. Astrid’s talk was followed by a lively debate on remote working with members of the audience who expressed their views and experiences of the practice in the tech industry. Not surprisingly, most women felt that too many firms have old fashioned, outdated approaches to the concept of remote working, and that more flexibility should be given to workers. The audience agreed that most issues with flexible work arrangements can be overcome with a little trust and communication.

For more extreme instances of remote working (such as Astrid’s scaling the Himalayas), Astrid offered the following tips and tricks:

Find the right power/weight of equipment ratio.

Check out power bars – many people aren’t aware of them and they are massively useful for remote working (and daily life).

Use li-on batteries carefully and alternate them with spares.

Use a device with a built-in cellular connection rather than tethering a mobile or using MiFi – the latter two burn batteries and may not work across different devices.

Avoid unforeseen complications by testing your gear on outings before you need it for work.

We also made sure that no geek left empty-handed, dishing out a plentiful supply of our rockin’ Girl Geek t-shirts to all in attendance.

Thank you, London. We hope to see you on our next trip. And if you can’t make it, just connect remotely. Even if you are halfway up a mountain, you no longer have an excuse!